Second Growth

For decades, conservation and research initiatives in tropical forests have focused almost exclusively on old-growth forests because scientists believed that these "pristine" ecosystems housed superior levels of biodiversity. With Second Growth, Robin L. Chazdon reveals those assumptions to be largely false, bringing to the fore the previously overlooked counterpart to old-growth forest: second growth. Even as human activities result in extensive fragmentation and deforestation, tropical forests demonstrate a great capacity for natural and human-aided regeneration. Although these damaged landscapes can take centuries to regain the characteristics of old growth, Chazdon shows here that regenerating-or second-growth-forests are vital, dynamic reservoirs of biodiversity and enviornmental services. What is more, they always have been.With chapters on the roles these forests play in carbon and nutrient cycling, sustaining biodiversity, providing timber and non-timber products, and integrated agriculture, Second Growth not only offers a thorough and wide-ranging overview of successional and restoration pathways, but also underscores the need to conserve, and further study, regenerating tropical forests in an attempt to inspire a new age of local and global stewardship.

"Second Growth combines an in-depth review with an eloquent case for the importance of understanding, promoting, and managing forest regeneration in contexts ranging from climate change to provision of ecosystem services and biodiversity conservation. In doing so, it may help to meet those challenges by providing evidence to ensure that the value of secondary forests is recognized. It will certainly stimulate the science needed to support practical action."--Valerie Kapos "Science", "Second Growth provides broad coverage of a subject that, despite its importance, has received less popular attention than 'old growth' tropical rain forests. Chazdon does an excellent job of synthesizing key ideas and bringing together recent research on tropical forest regeneration. . . . Chazdon's work is a valuable resource, providing both a solid review for those with knowledge in the field and a starting point for those new to the topic. . . . Highly recommended."--B. D. Orr, Michigan Technological University "Choice", "A complete review covering topics from ancient forest management to the effect of global economy on the fate of local forests. . . . Chazdon states in the preface that she wants to deliver an urgent message about forests: they are regenerating and this regeneration is malleable and it can be for our benefit. The message is remarkably delivered. This book integrates patterns that occur in the entire gradient from wet to dry forests. . . . Second Growth has answered most of my questions and has raised a thousand more, as good books and research always do. . . . This well-produced book . . . will be enormously useful for students, professors, and practitioners of forest restoration and management."--Cristina Martínez-Garza, Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos, Mexico "Ecology", "A tremendous survey. Chazdon draws on paleobotany, ecology, natural history, and policy and forest management to make the case for the potential of forest regeneration. Second Growth is astounding in its breadth and depth."--S. Joseph Wright "Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute", "As policy makers come to grips with . . . ecological uncertainty, they are finding Chazdon's recent book, Second Growth, all the more valuable. Five years in the writing and published last year, the tome is a kind of guide to restoration, synthesizing decades of research and explaining how tropical forests can come back on their own--and what to do if they don't. 'It's an opus; it covers all you would want to know and could imagine you want to know about secondary forests, ' says Thomas Rudel, a rural sociologist at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, in New Jersey. 'There's nothing quite like [it].' The book . . . arrived at a timely moment, just as large-scale forest restoration was gaining momentum."--Elizabeth Pennisi "Science"

Robin L. Chazdon is professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Connecticut and coeditor of Foundations of Tropical Forest Biology and Tropical Forest Plant Ecophysiology. She lives in Storrs, CT.